The mixed-use building "Au fil de l'eau", designed by the Archikubik architecture studio, has a complex and hybrid program of temporary residences and is located in the Ivry-Port Nord district, a neighbourhood in transition and a pivotal area between ZAC of Bercy-Charenton and Massena-Bruneseau, on the Parisian side, and that of Ivry Confluences, on the Ivry-sur-Seine side.

The project aims to resolve the current situation of monofunctionality in the neighbourhood, which has a dominant program of industrial and tertiary activities in which the lack of housing and urban life is obvious.
The project developed by Archikubik attempts to resolve this situation by following two fundamental principles: on the one hand, a mixed-use program that combines hotels, offices and transgenerational residences, which hybridizes housing for students with accommodation for seniors and more temporary residents. On the other hand, the search for vertical densification seeks to free up ground floors and public spaces within the private space.

The set of two buildings, Building A on Quai Marcel Boyer and Building B on Rue François Mitterrand, uses the landscape as a support infrastructure, seeking a balanced mix of its exterior image, avoiding repetition in the facades that attempt to formally dialogue. with the activities carried out in the Seine.


Au fil de l’eau by Archikubik. Photograph by Archikubik.
 

Project description by Archikubik

The "Au fil de l'eau" project is located in the Ivry-Port Nord district, a district in transition and a hinge zone between the Bercy-Charenton and Massena-Bruneseau ZACs on the Paris side, and Ivry Confluences on the Ivry-sur-Seine side.

The district is mainly made up of industrial and tertiary activities buildings and suffers from a flagrant lack of housing and urban life. The project proposes to address this shortfall by following two fundamental principles:

- A mixed-use programme combining hotels, offices and trans-generational residences, able to combine student residences and residences for the elderly as an expression of new typologies adapted to contemporary social reality.
- Vertical densification with two emergencies to free up ground floors and redeploy the urban space from the private one (visual openings, shared green spaces, open spaces).

The two buildings, Building A on Quai Marcel Boyer and Building B on Rue François Mitterrand, seek a harmonious but non-repetitive match of facades, while affirming the presence of the Seine, and the traditional movement of barges, by incorporating round openings applied in different ways along the facades, as the water flows.

We are also maintaining the notion of a pedestal, which runs along Quai Marcel Boyer, to preserve an urban morphology that extends from the Pathé-Truffaut building to the E. Leclerc building, including the current FNAC head office.


Au fil de l’eau by Archikubik. Photograph by Archikubik.

"Au fil de l'eau", an original and contemporary urban link for the town of Ivry-sur-Seine, to establish a new, pleasant and peaceful urban continuity between Paris and the major urban project of the ZAC Ivry Confluences. Neighbouring the very high density planned in the Bruneau Nord sector, notably Jean Nouvel's Duo towers, the project is less than 500 metres from buildings with heights ranging from R+25 to R+37.

The constraint of not exceeding the height of R+16 in this sector of Ivry is very present in the architectural project, which will have to seek a relevant language to mark the entrance to the city. At the same time, the Ivry Port Nord district is a tough neighbourhood, a business park with little housing, consisting mainly of large commercial containers and office buildings dating from the 1980s. However, the proximity of the nearby Seine (the project is located 80m from the river's edge) adds a poetic element to this district, which we feel is a very sensitive area for the treatment of facades: the river flows, barges and boats pass by in a constant to-and-fro movement, the mists on the water blur the boundaries of the river... But you have to go down to the Quai bas to see it...

The language of the windows on these boats will enable us to set up a narrative that will allow us to work the many windows that make up the project in a more amiable form, that of portholes, in contrast to the square windows of the surrounding offices. The ensemble of two buildings, Building A on Quai Marcel Boyer and Building B on Rue François Mitterrand, seeks a harmonious but non-repetitive match of facades, while affirming the presence of the Seine, and the traditional movement of barges, by incorporating round holes applied in different ways along the facades, as the water flows by.


Au fil de l’eau by Archikubik. Photograph by Archikubik.

The two buildings have rounded corners to soften their volumetry, and the trans-generational residence will be covered in a textile mesh that will rescale the building, extrapolating the size of the windows behind and at the same time acting as a solar filter for the entire volumetry. This mesh will also act as a 'buffer' against bad weather, particularly torrential rain and increasingly frequent wind due to climate change.

A second area of work has been to establish the landscape as an infrastructure to support the expected built density. A new street connecting Rue F. Mitterrand with Quai Marcel Boyer has been created and handed back to the town to reduce the existing public space. This new street is closely linked to the landscaping of the project at the heart of the block and runs vertically up the "Opportunity Wall" that links the two buildings along the party wall and covers the existing wall of the cinemas with a work by artists Louise Decruck and Dimitri Arnaoudov. This wall of opportunities hosts a mixed programme dedicated to culture and agriculture. It will be co-constructed with residents.

More information

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Architects
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Collaborators
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Project Manager.- SCCV Urban Ivry 94.
BET Generalist.- Facéa.
Landscaper.- Espinàs i Tarrasó.
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Dates
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Año finalización construcción.- 2022.
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Area
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24,350 m².
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Location
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ZAC Ivry-Port, Ivry-sur-Seine, France.
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Programme
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Mixed-use building - Intergenerational student residence (362 units) and senior residence (111 units) / 3* Hotel (175 rooms) / Business tourism residence (99 units) / Offices / Services and parking).
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Photography
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Gregoire Crétinon and Archikubik.
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ARCHIKUBIK, ecosystem of architecture, urbanism and urban landscape, established in 2001 by Marc Chalamanch, Miquel Lacasta y Carmen Santana, is composed by an international and multi-disciplinary team that works in an atmosphere of R&D in @kubik space, in Barcelona.
 
Its process of urban and architectural work is framed within the constant development of synergies and exchanges between public space and private participative space, with the purpose of rethinking our cities from the concept of the e-polis, the polis of the information society, as a place for learning, debate, diversity, respect and exchange. Conceiving, giving the chance to inhabitants to become eco-citizens within communities, through architecture, to make public space an opportunity to rephrase our territories and our cities in the era of social networks. In order to conciliate this, our projects are based on the scale 1/ , a system that is capable of going further to be included within a transversal ecosystem, with the aim of articulating a global vision in a territorial scale, the one from the city, the neighborhood and the human scale, all of it incorporated to the time vector.

Their research is centered in the wide interpretation of ‘’green’’ as a tool for creation, as an infrastructure for the territory, with the objective of creating an organoleptic environment, open and sensitive. The productive landscape as a horizon for reflection. Moving forward in a process of urban network acupuncture, all the projects and scales represent a chance to start strategies and tactics that allow to go further than the conventional codes that belong to last centuries’ industrial world. The investigation of new typologies to approach the constant transformations of society is part of our DNA.
 
The last recognitions are: prix Futures Possibles for the ZAC Rouget de Lisle and International FAD Award for the housing project in Ivry-sur-Seine (under construction). Also, we are finalists for the last phase of the international competition Reinventer.paris with a third use building in Clichy-Batignolles and finalists for the Ascer Award for ceramic buildings with the Parking Saint-Roch in Montpellier. Archikubik has been twice selected for the Venice Biennale with the Parking Saint-Roch in Montpellier for the Catalan Pavilion and the Diposit del Rei Martí in Barcelona for the Spanish Pavilion. 
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